Shop Direct hails ‘Mobile Christmas’ for sales lift as it strikes personalisation deal with IBM
Shop Direct's ongoing experimentation and innovation in mobile saw sales on the medium total 74 per cent of Christmas sales during 2015.
The retail group credited Very.co.uk's 17 per cent sales jump with driving forward strong group sales up 6 per cent year-on-year to close the year as a £1bn business. The performance was buouyed by a record festive period, including a successful Black Friday that saw sales surge 64 per cent year-on-year.
Shop Direct also credited its marketing strategy focussed on personalisation and said it wil accelerate this during 2016 to tailor journeys and offer customers more services.
To that end, Shop Direct has partnered with IBM for a £50m Financial Services personalisation programme to offer customers financial services products tailored to them.
Commenting on the results and the company's 100 per cent digital approach chief executive Alex Baldock said: “Received wisdom is that every retailer should be multi-channel. We don’t buy that. We like being a Digital pureplay. It allows us to keep things simple and focus our energy on mobile innovation, which has been a big factor in our record peak trading.
“Looking forward to 2016, we’ll stick to delivering our strategy of making good things easily accessible to more people. In particular, 2016 will be the year of personalisation for Shop Direct. Personalisation is at the heart of making the shopping experience ever easier for our customers, enabled by heavy investment in Big Data and technology which we expect to make a big impact in 2016."